White iPhone 4 Again Departs from Apple Online Store

The white iPhone 4 is truly as elusive as the legendary Sasquatch (what most folks refer to as “Bigfoot”) -- after popping up for reservation in the Apple Store iOS app earlier this week as well as Apple.com, it’s gone yet again, just like that.

MacRumors is reporting that white iPhone 4 fans are lamenting yet again over the device being removed from Apple’s online store. It’s not the first time that’s happened, of course, but with word this week that Cupertino is delaying the white model until spring of 2011, it’s probably the last time we’ll see it for a while.

“Apple's online store had previously depicted both the white and black iPhone 4, with text under the image of the white model noting that it was unavailable for ordering or in-store pickup,” MacRumors notes.

Worse yet, there are now rumblings that Apple may cancel the white version entirely. According to Boy Genius Report, the company “in fact has no plans to release the white model iPhone 4. Our source hypothesizes another ‘delay’ communicated around March, leading us into an iPhone 5 release time-frame in June/July.”

At this point, it probably would have been a better move on Apple’s part to just do away with the white model entirely -- and yet, as MacRumors notes, the elusive device color continues to be used “in promotional images for the company’s bumpers” as well as in the iPhone 4 image gallery. We’re not sure who would actually buy a white iPhone next spring, knowing full well that a new model will be right around the corner -- but maybe Cupertino has some pretty serious fans of the non-color white.

So what’s behind the on-again, off-again white iPhone 4 problems? No one knows for sure, but the latest speculation seems to point to “difficulties with light leaking into the iPhone through its white body and affecting camera performance.”